Could we equate "having owns style" as "being in a rut" are they not synonymous?

Having one's own style is not a rut at all. It's knowing what you want and how to produce it.

For exampe, one photographer might want to avoid harsh bokeh in portraits (and might rather like it for inanimate objects). So knowning that, the photographer might have an extensive "bag of tricks" used when appropriate to avoid anything that produces harsh bokeh. That's competent photography at work. This photographer will almost never produce a portrait with harsh bokeh, and it will be a very noticable characteristic of the photographer's style.

Another photographer might also like the same basic look for portraits, but might not yet have developed many techniques that provide the desired result over a wide range of circumstances. This photographer will have a lower keeper rate and it is also true that at the time production images are selected there will be otherwise rather nice portaits that do exhibit harsh bokeh. There might be a some tendancy towards no harsh bokeh, but it might not be strong enough to make that a character of this photographer's style.

Of course as time goes by and the second photographer learns more techniques that style will become more distinctive, and eventually the second photographer might also have that as an obvious personal style.

Knowing how to get exactly what you want isn't a rut, it's an exhibition of competence. And there is no reason that a competent photographer would never decide to change. One might make great efforts to avoid portraits with harsh bokeh for 20 years, and then pull of a Picasso style change! New partner with different attributes... change the style to take advantage of the model! Maybe a new partner looks best with harsh bokeh... a competent photographer would change style over night.

A rut is when you do the same thing even if it doesn't produce the results you want.

A rut is when you do the same thing even if it doesn't produce the results you want.

A rut is simply a routine, usually dull and unproductive, not 'per se' with a negative outcome.Repetitive behaviour 'that doesn't produce the results you want' is, often, one of the first signs of mental instability. Different.

Unless, of course, you're referring to the annual sexual activity in deer …

He's here to educate the savages and, as so often happens with colonialists, he's humiliated and angry that the savages are both smarter than he thought they were, and astonishingly resistant to having his ideas shoved down their throats.

If an artist chooses a medium to communicate his or her messages, and through years of persistence and practice succeeds (via recognition?), then one might confidently say the artist is a master of that medium. Tomorrow, if the artist has a new message, he or she can use that mastery+medium to communicate it to us.

If this is the case, how can anyone accept a literary definition of art from the artist, or even a commentary of it for that matter, simply because language isn't the medium the artist chose? E.g., Picasso could communicate with paintings, but why should we assume Picasso could communicate the meaning of art with words? If he could do it just as effectively, he would have become a writer or poet. After all, artists are not writers or poets or linguists or epistemologists or historians, etc.

Similarly, how can a dictionary definition of art or style have any practical value to an artist, just as the dictionary meaning of the word 'love' can have any practical significance to lovers?

Hi Sareesh, You've put your finger on the problem with college professors, actors, and celebrities in general who, being proficient in some narrow field, experience a swelling of the ego that convinces them they're proficient in every field. We hear a lot from them, especially in the field of politics. I suspect some of them lurk on LuLa.

As far as I can see, "style" has absolutely nothing to do with the effectiveness of art; it's merely the personality of the artist showing through his work. Bad painters can have a "style" just as good painters can have a "style." And though a photographer's work may be very effective, when a camera is in the way, "style" goes out the window,

Sareesh, I think you're mixing up talking about a thing with the thing itself.

Certainly I can talk about what ingredients produce which colors of paint, and what sorts of canvas will have what sorts of effects on the look of a brushstroke, right? That's actually science, not art. Or possibly some kind of engineering.

Talking about "style" is really not the same as doing art, for sure. It's really criticism, in the same way that talking about pigments is science.

In the same way that a scientific understanding of pigments may -- or may not -- be of interest or assistance to a painter, a critical understanding of style may -- or may not. Some artists will find it useful, certainly. They'll want to formulate an idea of what "style" is, what's important about it, and how they use that idea in their work. Others may work in a much less analytical way. There is no right way, here, but there are multiple paths.

Criticism is a thing unto itself, and is as much for people who want to understand art as it is for the artist, probably moreso.

If this is the case, how can anyone accept a literary definition of art from the artist, or even a commentary of it for that matter, simply because language isn't the medium the artist chose?

That is why people using their own personal definitions of the term "style" don't produce meaningful discussion. Leave it to language experts (the ones who write dictionaries) to determine what words mean. Leave it to artists to decide what art means.

The "commentary" from an artist has value if it is about how style affects art, but not if it is about what the term "style" means.

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E.g., Picasso could communicate with paintings, but why should we assume Picasso could communicate the meaning of art with words? If he could do it just as effectively, he would have become a writer or poet. After all, artists are not writers or poets or linguists or epistemologists or historians, etc.

Picasso created visual art, and clearly qualifies as an authority on that subject. He did not create language art. He wasn't particularly good at either writing or talking, in terms of making art with language.

Hence his discussion of visual art is authoritative and correct, though it may not be extremely effective communications.

If we find something by Picasso about how to talk or write about art, it would not be authoritative and may not even be correct.

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Similarly, how can a dictionary definition of art or style have any practical value to an artist, just as the dictionary meaning of the word 'love' can have any practical significance to lovers?

Knowing dictionary definitions of style has no value in the production process of art. But knowing a dictionary definition is an absolute requirement for a language based discussion of style (or for that matter of art).

Discussion that lacks knowledge of the subject might be entertaining, might make good comedy, and can even be good art! But it isn't an authoritative source of technical detail that teaches about the subject. If you don't know what "style" is (in essence how it is defined) then you cannot teach anyone else it's value or lack of.

I agree with that analysis. He takes his anecdotal experiences of single specific events and generalizes them far beyond what is valid. Sometimes the point he wants to make is valid, but the generalization goes so far that he does more than make his valid point, and the unnecesary part isn't valid.

Given that he does have the background, both in theory and practice, I would have expected that he could have written a much better piece than that. But I would suggest this is exactly the problem that Sareesh Sudhakaran brought up, because Alain Briot is an authority on visual arts, but perhaps not so good a language arts. He just doesn't write all that well...

Note that I did not read the other articles in his series, so this one article might be the exception, or it might be typical. I don't know.

... these two artists made definite choices in there work, and tended to make them the same way over and over, and the result of making those choices over and over the same way it two bodies of work which are very visually coherent, and which look nothing like one another. I call it "style" you may call it anything you like, ...

"What Adams' pictures show us is different from what we see in any landscape photographer before him. They are concerned, it seems to me, not with the description of objects -- the rocks, trees and water that are the nominal parts of his pictures -- but with the description of the light that they modulate, the light that justifies their relationship to each other. ... The landscape in Weston's pictures is seen as sculpture: round, weighty, and fleshily sensuous. In comparison, Adams' pictures seem as dematerialized as the reflections on still water, or the shadows cast on morning mist: disembodied images concerned not with the corpus of things but with their transient aspect." page viii John Szarkowski

"My seven portfolios reveal a rather persistent style, through photographs made from 1932 to 1976. I have worked in much the same approach and with the same general techniques for forty-five years. The subjects I have photographed are far more varied than one would expect from most exhibited and published material; the later portfolios especially reveal some fresh facets. However, I have felt no reason for drastic change, and I have always believed it questionable for artists to arbitrarily change their styles -- simply to be different or in step with concurrent movements and trends of creative thought." page v Ansel Adams

Adams is an interesting case. He officially abandoned pictorialism, I guess, but in reality he seems to simply have abandoned the techniques that were in vogue among pictorialists at the time.

"My first selection of photographs was ... privately published in 1927. ... While made with care and devotion, it was more representational in approach than my later productions and reflected a style of work less realized in character and emphasis than my photography after 1930 -- the year I saw Paul Strand's negatives in Taos, an experience which profoundly influenced my concept of photography." page v Ansel Adams